“A lot of people are going to dislike you, for reasons valid and not. A whole lot of people. This seems like it should be upsetting. What it really is, is freeing.” – 30secondtherapy (Twitter)
My eldest son once called us excitedly to tell us that he had gotten a bid to join a fraternity. The next day he called us, even more excited, to tell us that he had decided not to accept the bid. He explained that he had spent so much time trying to impress everyone, that when he finally got some breathing time to look around, he realized that he didn’t particularly like or relate to, more than half of the people in the fraternity.
I remember a good college friend of mine lamenting about a woman who wouldn’t stop trying to be her friend, almost to the point of stalking her. Our college friend told a group of us that there wasn’t anything particularly unlikable about the woman, it’s just that my friend already had “too many f-ing friends.” (in her words)
Relationships are work. They take time, effort, money and emotion. Sometimes we just get spread too thin and we have to pick and choose. Sometimes are choices are rational and sometimes they are not. I never had nannies for my children, but had I picked a nanny, I would never have picked a pretty one. That is about my own insecurities, I understand, but it is the truth. The pretty nanny I would not have picked, might have felt rejected and not understood why. I would never have said, “Well, you’re too pretty,” but that would have been the truth. If we had nannies, they all would have had to look like Mrs. Doubtfire.
The point I am trying to make is the one above made by 30secondtherapy. One of my all-time favorite spiritual teachers/authors, Anthony de Mello had this to say:
“If you wish to understand this, think of a little child that is given a taste for drugs. As the drug penetrates the body of the child, it becomes addicted and its whole being cries out for the drug. To be without the drug is so unbearable a torment that it seems preferable to die. Now this is exactly what society did to you when you were a child. You were not allowed to enjoy the solid, nutritious food of life: work and play and the company of people and the pleasures of the senses and the mind. You were given a taste for the drug called Approval, Appreciation, Attention, the drug called Success, Prestige, Power. Having”
― Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love
Anthony de Mello says if we drop the need for approval, appreciation and attention from other people, who may or may not like us, for very rational or irrational reasons, we can just live our lives in peace and appreciation of all of the pleasures that life does has to offer. And at the same time, we allow others to do the same. As the 30secondtherapy quote points out, this is a very freeing way to go about our lives.
“If you try to please all, you please none.” – Aesop
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” – Lao Tzu
“You wouldn’t worry so much of what others think of you, if you realized how seldom they do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt